At Hawthorn Time

by Melissa Harrison

  Harford, Rogers & Sturt

  FARM DISPERSAL SALE

  Culverkeys Farm, Lodeshill, 7 May.

  On behalf of P Harland (deceased)

  Sale of 2 Case Tractors, Farm Machinery,

  Livestock Equipment, Milking Parlour and Effects,

  General Horticultural Equipment and Miscellanea

  and Household Contents. Sale to commence

  at 11 a.m. prompt.

  ‘Is that the farm where . . .?’ Dave turned to look up at him, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘P Harland, it says here. Did you know him?’

  ‘I – I was friends with their son. Our house is right next to the farm.’

  ‘Poor kid. He OK?’

  ‘I don’t know. Him and his sister moved away with his mum six years ago. Nearly seven.’

  ‘So they’re selling off the farm. What about the land? That going to auction?’

  Jamie shrugged. ‘Two months since he died and we’ve still not heard.’

  ‘Probably go to a developer: new houses and that. Or they might look for coal, or shale gas – you thought of that? Going on all over.’

  ‘Maybe Mrs Harland will come back and live there, maybe it’s hers now.’

  ‘Well, you don’t know, these days,’ said Dave, sitting back in the creaking chair. ‘Could be a lot of money in it. You’ll have to wait until the lawyers have finished with it all, I suppose.’

  Riding home after his shift that night through the dark lanes, Babb Hill black and invisible to the east, Jamie thought about Culverkeys, about what might happen to it and what it would mean. The cows – seventy or so Holstein-Friesians, mostly milkers plus some calves and in-calf heifers and a Hereford stock bull – had been taken to market a few days after Philip Harland had died, and now the dispersal sale suggested that the farm would not be sold as a going concern; what wasn’t clear yet was what would happen to the land.

  When he thought about Culverkeys he pictured the aerial photograph that hung in the hallway at home; a man had knocked on the door one day and told his mother there’d been a plane over, and it had come in the post a few weeks later. In it the village looked like a jumble of grey squares surrounded by green; you could see the main road through it, and the turn-off to Crowmere, and a bit of the Boundway in one corner. And you could see his house at the end of the little cul-de-sac, with its tiny rectangle of garden behind; and beyond that, Culverkeys stretching north and west as far as the big field called the Batch with the oak in it: the green squares with their ghostly crop marks, the clumps of dark trees and the dew pond reflecting the sun like a drop of mercury. It looked, from that height, as though the back gardens on the west side of the cul-de-sac had been carved out of Culverkeys land; and perhaps they had. Perhaps the earth in Jamie’s back garden had once belonged to it.

  And he thought about Alex’s father, and the terrible way that he’d died. Jamie had come home after his shift one Friday night back in February to find all the lights on in the bungalow and both his parents in the lounge. The telly wasn’t on and they both stood up when he let himself in; he’d believed, for one heart-stopping second, that his grandfather had passed away.

  What he first felt, when his dad told him, was that it was in some way his fault – as if the long, slow process of the Harland family’s unravelling, now concluded with Philip’s death, had been set in motion by Jamie many years ago, tracked to the happy farmhouse from the bungalow somehow like a virus in the treads of his shoes.

  It was stupid, he knew. But the feeling had persisted. This wasn’t how things were supposed to have turned out; he and Alex were supposed to have been friends for ever, and the landscape into which they had both been born was something that should never have had to change.

  And yet Jamie had never quite had Alex’s optimism, never quite trusted the future in the way that Alex, back then, had seemed to. ‘What will you do when you grow up?’ he’d asked Alex once, back in primary school. Alex had answered for them both: ‘That’s easy. We’ll live here, on Culverkeys. I’ll be the farmer, and you can be the herdsman.’

  He’d wanted to believe it, but even then Jamie had known that life was more complicated than that.

  5

  Nettles, yellow archangel. Rabbits.

  It took Jack a long time to cross the motorway. The Roman road met it at a big junction up ahead but it frightened him, so he went back and tried a narrow turning signposted to a garden centre. Half a mile past the garden centre it became a lane leading to a white water tower of some kind, fenced off and monolithic behind a square yellow sign reading simply ‘A’. The structure bristled with aerials and masts; a Portakabin squatted beside it. Jack’s heart thumped irrationally as he passed.

  Then, after a short rise up into the light, the lane leaped over the sudden, roaring river of the motorway. As he crossed it Jack was a brief silhouette to the cars beneath him, a glimpsed figure that left nothing behind but a single white petal blown from his coat that was caught briefly by a windscreen wiper far below him and then given up to the slipstream and the infinity of the wind.

  On the other side of the motorway the lane ran alongside a ditch that looked as though it had recently held water, before rejoining the old road north. Behind a derelict pub, once clearly a drover’s inn, two old paddocks were now given over to a machinery and plant hire firm, and a makeshift footbridge made from plastic trench covers crossed the ditch to where an Alsatian barked repetitively at Jack through a steel gate. A brown rat darted to the shadows under the bridge, watched both by Jack and by a buzzard wheeling easily over the old Roman road, its primaries spread like fingers in the late-afternoon sun.

  That evening Jack decided to walk on into the night. It wasn’t just about staying unseen, it was a way to immerse himself in a world that most people didn’t know existed. At dusk the countryside came alive, and it was then that Jack felt most at home, as though his true peers were the blunt-nosed badgers in their centuries-old setts, the owls hunting the field margins and the otters slipping quietly upstream. When he died, he sometimes thought, it would be at night. The sky would slowly lighten to dawn, the morning sun would creep up to touch his beard and the still, green folds of his coat, but he would be gone.

  But not yet – never quite yet. Spring was advancing, warming the soil, and somewhere up ahead there would soon be asparagus to pick. He was probably a third of the way to Lodeshill at least, and he’d not been stopped so far; as he cut invisibly through the darkened car park of a Travelodge, he allowed himself to imagine, for the first time since leaving the hostel, that he was free.

  Later that night, deep in a pine plantation, Jack found a forest ranger’s high seat and climbed up to sit a while. The wind was coming from the south-west and the branches moved around him, whispering, sighing. On the far horizon an electrical storm flickered silently, although the sky above was clearing.

  He thought about the ranger he’d known, what, twenty years ago now? He must have been about the age that Jack was now, taciturn but with a feeling for wild places that had rivalled Jack’s own. He had understood the woods he managed like nobody else Jack had ever met, and when he shot deer, or magpies, or trapped grey squirrels, he had done it with a deep and absolute respect.

  He’d found Jack’s camp one night while he slept, had woken him gently with the toe of his boot; but then, as he watched Jack gingerly putting on his boots he’d crouched down quietly to look, pushing Jack’s hands away. Then, brooking no argument, he’d put Jack in the back of his truck with his two curious pointers, driven him to his cottage and cleaned and dressed the blisters himself.

  Jack had slept on his sagging, dog-smelling couch for a week, spending the days working with him in the forest; at the end of it he had offered to teach Jack to shoot, perhaps to train him up to work alongside him. It was the one time, since he’d taken to the road, that Jack had considered putting down roots. It was the idea of having a territory and how well the man knew it: every rabbit wa
rren, every woodpecker’s nest, every drey. To belong in that way, to have such a close focus, felt right: a home parish. But ultimately, Jack knew that he needed to be on the move. Something impelled him, though he couldn’t have given it a name.

  Now, back on the ground, he moved quietly into the wind into an area of clear fell and then to the dense cover of new pines. After a little while he left the wood behind and took to open country, the stars impossibly bright overhead. For the first time since leaving London he felt at peace.

  As he followed the curve of an old hedgeline he spotted a shape trotting towards him and froze: a dog fox, something big and dark in its jaws. It passed close enough to Jack for him to hear fox-breath whistle through feathers.

  Approaching some farm buildings in the small hours Jack woke a collie, its barks lofting out from its kennel to echo flatly off the corrugated-iron byres, the commotion reminding Jack for a moment of prison.

  He crouched behind a quickthorn hedge until the dog was quiet. Then, unhooking the frayed orange twine that held the metal gate shut, he lifted it carefully over the rough concrete and swung it to behind him.

  There had been a dwelling of some kind on this spot since Domesday; in fact, for many centuries before. Now it was just a modern set of farm buildings, but in the stand of nettles that still marked the long-gone midden, in the patch of soil near the farmhouse stained black by walnuts from the lost tree in whose shade horses had once been tied, the land remembered.

  In the moonlit yard it didn’t take Jack long to find what he wanted: a plastic bucket, which he rinsed carefully using the tap in the milking shed. He took his pack from his back and set it by the wall, then skirted the barns slowly, passing through another gate into the pasture beyond.

  Many of the cows were lying down, but several stood close together in the near corner of the field. They stamped and twitched their tails as he approached, and he spoke to them softly, telling them his name and why he was there: Jan Toy, Jan Toy, it’s Jack, your green boy . . .

  It was important that the first beast didn’t startle, and Jack laid a hand on its warm flank. It blew air from its nostrils and twitched its hide, but it tolerated him. Slowly, he moved into the herd until he was surrounded by their warm, shifting bodies. He closed his eyes and tried to sense which was the calmest animal, but in the dark it was mostly luck.

  He ran his hand down the flank of a cow near the edge of the group. It stepped sideways, delicately, but at last it allowed Jack to kneel in the wet grass and press his cheek to its belly. In the dark he heard, rather than saw, the milk jet and froth from the teats as he pulled; he had to listen to its note to tell whether he was directing it into the bucket or onto the ground. As he milked he looked past the breathing herd to the dark horizon where a bright iridium flare announced the slow passage of a satellite overhead.

  Afterwards he carried the bucket back to the yard where the collie watched him from the gate with its ears pricked.

  ‘Hello,’ he whispered, pouring the warm milk carefully into a plastic bottle he took from his pack. ‘It’s me, Jack.’ The collie regarded him. After a moment he returned a little to the bucket and tilted it for the dog. It slunk forward, belly low, and drank. Jack gave it his hand to sniff before he left, and hoped for a welcome if he came that way again.

  6

  Arum (cuckoo pint, lords and ladies, bobbin joan) – spadix first formation. Ash trees in flower. Sunshine.

  Kitty took a seat in the back pew of the church and clasped her hands in her lap. As the echo of the heavy door closing behind her faded away, the air seemed to refold itself in perfect stillness. It wasn’t totally silent – she could hear rooks cawing outside, and the distant sound of a mower – but it had a pellucid, listening quality that she believed could be found nowhere else. Briefly, she shut her eyes. Over the faint reek of damp and the odour of wool kneelers she could smell the flowers brought in for the Easter service several days before, now wilting slightly in their blocks of green Oasis.

  Hundreds of years of prayer had filled the space around her, bounded by the building’s cool walls and tall windows: hundreds of years of village breath. Lodeshill’s faithful surrounded her, all loved in their time and their passing mourned; remembered for a few lifetimes, then lost. A name scratched into the back of a pew. A stone slab from which the legend had been worn away by centuries of feet.

  She had only meant to pin a notice up in the porch, but had found herself coming in. It was a moment of stillness, that was all. Just a way to step outside your life for a few minutes. Who was it who talked about places where prayer had been valid? This was surely one of them. The vicar had once told her that the whitewashed walls would at one time have been lurid with pictures of heaven and hell, an incentive for people to confess their sins – as she perhaps should one day. It was hard to imagine now, though the leering face, wreathed in oak leaves, on one of the roof bosses spoke of a more vital and mysterious past.

  Why did these places persist? she wondered. What hold did they still have over people? The ancient fear of damnation was no more; the approval of the local community hardly mattered to most. And what was that, anyway – community? The faltering congregation, the parish council, the clique of diehard regulars at the Green Man? A year in and she still only really knew a few people in Lodeshill, although the sense remained that there was a core of village life somewhere to which she, an outsider, did not have access. Where this might be if not at church was beyond her; but still.

  The door groaned and clanged again behind her, and the dust motes danced in the draught. ‘Oh, Katherine, hello,’ the vicar called out, in less than reverential tones. Still, this was his workplace, she supposed; he couldn’t always be treating it like some kind of monument. ‘A moment with God?’

  ‘Something like that,’ she replied, getting up. ‘I just popped in to put a notice in the porch,’ she said. ‘My friend Claire – she’s an artist. She’s got an exhibition in Connorville. Is it all right?’

  ‘Of course, of course. And how is your painting? The weather’s been lovely – perfect for you, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Oh – yes.’

  ‘You’ll be exhibiting them soon, no doubt. You must let us have a preview!’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure about that,’ Kitty said. The truth was, she seemed to have hit something of a wall. All those years spent dreaming of moving to the countryside, all those years of still lifes and art classes and day trips to beauty spots – yet now she had it all at her fingertips the landscapes she was producing looked nothing like the shining visions she had carried around in her head for so long. Technically they were passable, she felt, but there was something missing, something she couldn’t quite identify or describe. When she thought about it, which was often, the word ‘immanence’ kept springing unhelpfully to mind; but it wasn’t anything religious that her paintings were lacking, it wasn’t that at all.

  That afternoon she took the camera and went out looking for possible locations. Nowhere too obvious, but she did want it to be beautiful. She wanted it to sum up her feelings about the area, somehow; to communicate what it was really like.

  How she had yearned for green places when she lived in Finchley; for somewhere ancient and unchanging, somewhere where the past lived on in the woods and fields, where you could imagine its previous generations and feel connected with the things that were there now. When Chris and Jenny were young she had insisted on holidays in the Lake District or Cornwall; there, out in the landscape, she had felt herself expand, felt something in her quieten – if only momentarily. When the kids got older it had not been so easy; they had wanted to go somewhere hot, like their friends, and Howard had been only too happy to agree. So it was Italy, Morocco, the odd skiing trip in between; meanwhile, she had the walls of the house hung with images of the countryside: watercolours, etchings, prints, it didn’t matter. And eventually, as the kids grew up, the long campaign to escape London had begun.

  Now she drove to Babb Hill and parked in a
little car park formed from an old quarry. The route to the summit was busy at weekends, and with joggers and dog walkers in the mornings, but it was a Thursday afternoon and there were only a couple of other cars there. She slung the camera over her shoulder, locked the car and set out.

  The path was wide and for the most part shaded by the trees that clothed the hill’s flanks. The beeches were almost fully out but the ash leaves were still locked in their black buds and plenty of light filtered down. Here and there were pools of bluebells, luminously ultraviolet where the sun hit them, but Kitty had already painted bluebells, and moved on.

  Apart from the TV mast, trig point and toposcope, the hill’s broad spine was undulating and bare, its ancient hill fort now no more than two massy humps bisected by the path. The views were breathtaking: on clear days like today it was easy to believe you could see nine counties. Kitty set the camera’s zoom to infinity and fired off some pictures, but she already knew that what she had captured was both too distant and somehow too general.

  The climb had taken it out of her somewhat, but she didn’t want the day to be wasted. Back at the car she got an Ordnance Survey map out from the glove compartment and spread it out on the bonnet. Just north of Babb Hill was a little village she’d seen signposts for, but hadn’t yet explored. She decided to go and have a look.

  It turned out to be bigger than Lodeshill, with a listed church and some fine old almshouses. She parked near the war memorial and took the lane north out of the village past fields where fat lambs butted their mothers, the camera banging against her hip. Although it was still warm the afternoon was beginning to draw in a little: her shadow was long on the road beside her, and the hedges on either side were filling up with birds.

  Years ago, before Jenny had been born, she had taken a photography course. The group had gone out on field trips designed to teach them how to look, how to notice the things that spoke to them, so they could learn to capture them in a way that other people might enjoy.